ANTHROPOCENE-- THE AGE OF DESTRUCTION

    We are presently living in a geological epoch known as the HOLOCENE, which commenced about 12000 years ago after the Little Ice Age. It corresponds with the period of human growth, civilisations and technologies. But this human impact on the planet has been so massive that geologists are now seriously considering renaming this period as the ANTHROPOCENE epoch, dating from the commencement of significant human impacts on the Earth's geology and eco-systems, including the element of climate change. Discussions are going on in the International Union of Geological Sciences about the starting date for this new epoch. There are three options: (a) from the beginning of the Agricultural Revolution 12000-15000 years ago; (b) from the detonation of the first atom bomb in 1945; (c) from the date of the first partial Nuclear Ban Treaty in 1963.

   The impact of human activity on the planet in the last 12000 years has been far greater and destructive than all the events in the hundreds of millions of years preceding it. We are literally reshaping the planet- levelling mountains, diverting the courses of rivers and stopping their natural flows, tunneling and eviscerating the very innards of Mother Earth in our ever increasing quest of more minerals, draining wetlands, sucking out the aquifers that have existed for millions of years, wiping out entire forests. Every natural resource has been exploited to the point of no return in our blind pursuit of the holy grail of GDP growth.

                  

                                                    ( Traffic jam on the Rohtang Pass )

   One hundred billion animals are slaughtered every year for food. 70% of the oceans have been fished out, to a point where marine populations can no longer replace themselves. 10000 species of life forms are going extinct every year, one thousand times the normal extinction rate in nature. Three trillion tons of Antartica ice has melted in the last 25 years; if this ice cap were to melt completely it would raise the level of the world's oceans by 60 meters. Ten million hectares of forests are felled every year; in the last 30 years we have lost 80 million hectares of primary forests, 30% of the Amazon rain forests have disappeared, 27000 trees are felled every day for making toilet paper! India too is not to be left behind in this race to the apocalypse, as the Joshimath subsidence and the approval for diverting 140 sq. kms of forest land and the felling of 800,000 trees in Greater Andaman for crony driven "development" shows. 50 million tons of e-waste is generated every year, with 90% of it being dumped in landfills. Technology is even gestating man-made viruses, and there are reports that in China they are using genetic splicing to manufacture a new sub-species of homo sapiens! We are playing God and the Devil at the same time. Does one need to say anything more?

   The atmosphere already contains 800 billion tons of CO2 and we keep adding another 40 billion tons every year. We have as much chance of restricting the global temperature rise to 1.5* C by 2050 as an ice cube in Hell. To achieve this target global emissions have to be cut by 50% by 2030- at the moment they continue to rise every year! Most climate scientists expect that we shall cross the 2* C rise barrier anytime after 2050. All the COPs and climate conferences are making no significant difference, as we continue to fight over historical culpability, funding, whether fossil fuels should be "phased down" or "phased out", carbon tax and carbon credits, etc. Shockingly, at the recent COP in Sharm-al-Shaikh, discussions focused on the impacts of climate change, rather than on its causes: we seem to be moving towards adaptation rather than towards prevention. Actually, it's unrealistic to expect any progress when all the world leaders fly in by chartered flights, emitting GHGs all the way, or when 18 out of 20 corporate sponsors of the just concluded COP27 support or partner with the fossil fuel industry, or when the next COP will be held in the UAE, one of the largest producers of natural gas in the world !

  This depredation and over exploitation of the planet is driven by our collective hubris, greed, ostentatious consumption, distorted economics and a technology gone rogue. It is totally avoidable. We do not need to do this to ensure a good quality of life for the eight billion population: there is plenty of wealth to go around if only its distribution were not so skewed. Consider this: global GDP is about 100 trillion US dollars- that works out to 12500 dollars per capita of the world's population, five times India's existing per capita income. The richest 10% of the population hold 85% of global wealth while the remaining 90% have to do with the left over 15%. It gets worse- the top 1% appropriate 47.8% of all the wealth (2021, Credit Suisse report), and these figures keep going up every year. If governments had better taxation and distribution policies there would be more than enough to go round, and we would not have to chase the relentless GDP growth targets that are unsustainable and killing this planet. GDP cannot grow infinitely when the natural resources are finite. 

   The Anthropocene contains other dimensions which contribute to climate change and the devastation of the planet: the decline of democracies since the early 1990s and the rise of fascism, expanding global trade, increasing social and economic inequalities, the entrenchment of exploitative neo-capitalism. All these factors result in governments ignoring, and even suppressing, people's movements; disempowering local communities, tribals and indigenous populations; prioritisation of economic gains over ecological costs; unsustainable exploitation of natural resources. Geo politics plays its role too in the ravaging of the environment; the ongoing war in Ukraine is reversing much of the small gains made in the last two decades- countries are going back to the use of fossil fuels, especially coal. Mines in Europe are being reopened, decommissioned nuclear plants are being put back in service, environmental concerns are being subordinated to geo-political and strategic considerations.

   The tipping point, beyond which the changes become irreversible, is not far away, and we are running out of time. Anthropocene may be the last epoch in the history of Man. The Doomsday clock in Chicago which was set at seven minutes to midnight  (the point of apocalypse) in 1947 is now at 90 seconds from midnight. As the poet said- ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee. The Trumps, Musks and Adanis of the world could probably migrate to Mars or Saturn, but what about us? In the words of Mahmoud Darwish:

Where should we go after the last frontiers?

Where should the birds fly after the last sky?

[ This piece is an expanded version of the author's views delivered at a session on ANTHROPOCENE at the Jaipur Literary Festival on 23rd January this year]

    

BOOK REVIEW--- RAINBOWS AND CLOUDS by SUNEETA MUKHERJEE.

 

                                    

RAINBOWS AND CLOUDS- A MEMOIR

BY  SUNEETA MUKHERJEE

DIAMOND BOOKS, NEW DELHI.

RUPEES 750/  PUBLISHED 2022.

                                                     FOR THE LOVE OF LIVING

  This book is essentially a paean to the joy of living. The author, Suneeta, was three years my senior in the Himachal Pradesh cadre of the IAS, and was quite the cynosure of all the unmarried males ( and a few married ones too!) in the cadre; the collective sigh of disappointment when she married Sudipto could be heard all the way in Chandigarh!  Many adjectives could be used to describe her- ambitious, spirited, daring, innovative, proactive, warm, helpful, gregarious - but she perhaps describes herself best in one line from the second chapter of her book: " I don't know why people talk of salvation. I love life so much that I want to be born again and again." That, in a nutshell is Suneeta Mukherjee.

  Actually, this is not so much a book in the conventional sense as a diary of her journey from a child in army cantonments through college and the civil services to being a wife, mother and a soul-mate with the soul being snatched away by an envious fate, far too soon. It is a personal narration, a stock taking of a life well spent where the credit column surpasses by far the debit one. I suspect that Suneeta wrote this book as much for herself as for the readers. There is a child-like quality in the simple way she narrates her varied past, and this is the way it should be for someone like her. Suneeta is a very likeable person, and such people are blessed with a childish candour, innocence, curiosity and joy of living, all of which she possesses in abundance. It makes for a very readable book.

  She holds nothing back in recounting her experiences- her apprehensions on her first posting in Nurpur, the suspiciously misogynist attitude of her first Deputy Commissioner ( a trait encountered often among her male colleagues), the unwelcome attentions of an insistent IAS probationer, the late budding of love for the dashing young army officer she finally married, the dried prune-like qualities of Secretaries in Delhi, the difficulties of promoting contraception techniques in Islamic countries, her soft corner for Godmen of different hues, the brutal but poignant circumstances attending her husband Sudipto's death in the second Covid wave. It is all narrated, however, in a matter-of-fact way, without any blame or recriminations.  One wishes that sometimes she would have given way to anger and vexation at some of these people and events, but as anyone who knows her will vouch, that is just not in her nature.

  The book is structured in chapters corresponding to her postings; this perhaps could have been avoided as it imparts to the whole a bureaucratic tinge, but it does make for a convenient chronological sequencing. It also has the benefit of blending her personal and professional life seamlessly, which is what the author probably intended. For Suneeta the person is just as interesting as Suneeta the civil servant.

  One of the more sobering take-aways from the book is the realisation that balancing home and work-life is a precarious exercise for a career woman in India even today, no matter that you belong to the most sought after service in the country. Many career decisions are dictated by family considerations, and vice versa. The author is not exempt from this reality, and perhaps her decision to quit the cadre early in her career and move on to Chandigarh, Delhi and beyond is part of this. But she is not one to ever have regrets, or to complain, or to entertain a "victim" psychosis. Suneeta's car has no rear view mirror, and she made the most of her various postings, in India and abroad, and gave of her best at all times. She makes a virtue out of any necessity, a stepping stone to success, as her career graph shows. It's a long way from Nurpur to New York, Colombo and Manila, from a sub-divisional office to a DI rank in the UNFPA  This makes for an inspiring autography.

  Her district postings behind her, her career seems to really take off in the late 1980's after she ventures into the Health sector. As she explains, this decision was driven initially by the compulsion to be with her family and her peripatetic husband who quit his military career fairly early for the same reason, over the objections of the then Army Chief, who felt that Sudipto had it in him to rise to the post of the Army Chief himself. ( He missed getting the Sword of Honour in the NDA by a whisker, and many still believe that he fully deserved it). She served first in the PGI Chandigarh and then as Deputy Director in AIIMS Delhi, and then moved on to the post of Joint Secretary in the Ministry of Health and Family Planning in the Union government. These postings gave her her metier and the skills and contacts to reach out even further, to a job in the International Civil Service, which, being Suneeta, she secured!

                                      

                                  

  There is one aspect of the book which I (being another "generalist" civil servant) found most interesting, and, in some ways, vindicating. Suneeta has spent most of the latter part of her career working with senior, highly educated medical professionals, both as colleague and boss. In recounting those years, and the many crises she has dealt with, one fact that comes out clearly is this- that the essential USP of the IAS is its ability to coordinate with other services and disciplines in an increasingly complex governmental and administrative structure to deliver public services. This includes working through, and around, politicians. Suneeta demonstrates these skills and qualities again and again, whether it is in persuading the DDA to rehabilitate encroachers on AIIMS land, or prevailing upon Ministers in Bangladesh and the Phillipines to permit the distribution of condoms for family planning. Her career shows that the IAS is not, after all, a much derided "generalist" service, it is a service that specialises in the most difficult of all disciplines. public interest administration. It holds the various parts of the machine together and ensures it works as smoothly as possible. We should be thankful to her for keeping the flag flying!

  The author describes in some detail her UNFPA stint and the parallel goings on in her family, with her children Mitali and Abu, growing up and occupying their own niches in life. The details can occasionally become tedious, but then don't forget this is, after all, a personal diary! A diary which ends on a very poignant note with the departure of Sudipto from her life and this world. Though devastated, her closest companion and pillar of strength no more by her side, she yet describes it all in her usual clinical manner, as much an observer of events as a participant.                                                                                                Rainbows are funny things: they have a pot of gold at one end and a cloud at the other. Suneeta has had her share of both. Sudipto was a student of astrology, and before he left he had told Suneeta not to grieve, that he had to go but that they would be together again in a couple of years. One sincerely hopes that, for once, Sudipto would be proved wrong on this one.

THE HIMACHAL CHIEF MINISTER NEEDS A GREEN AGENDA- NOW !

 

  THE HIMALAYAS HAVE SPOKEN IN JOSHIMATH, IS ANYONE IN SHIMLA  LISTENING ?

 

Now that the Himachal Chief Minister, Mr. Sukhwinder Singh Sukhu, has managed to form his Cabinet and appoint more Chief Secretaries/ Special Chief Secretaries and Advisors than there are trees in Shimla, I earnestly hope that he will apply his mind to more important public issues concerning the natural environment. I say "more important" because Secretaries and Ministers come and go and can look after themselves, but the environment is irreplaceable and has to be protected and nurtured in this Anthropocene age. If a reminder was needed the events in Joshimath will do nicely, thank you.

   I am always amazed at the apathy of the Indian voter who is constantly being battered by the government's depredation of the environment under the guise of "development" but never makes this an election issue. When it comes to the crunch religion, caste, false promises, rhetoric take precedence over droughts, floods, heat waves and noxious air. But in the November elections in Himachal  (which the Congress won) I see a silver lining and a welcome change: issues concerning the environment- hydel projects, unnecessary road widening, more airports, unsustainable town planning, deforestation, repeated water shortages- do appear to have acquired some traction and perhaps did influence the voting patterns. Which is why the newly minted Chief Minister must prepare an agenda/ action plan for the state's natural environment and put it on the fast track (perhaps under an Advisor who is genuinely required, unlike the other sinecures). I, of course, have a wish list of what he should be doing in the New Year, here are the four main action points:

[1] STOP INDISCRIMINATE CONSTRUCTION/ WIDENING OF ROADS.

      Himachal will be destroyed by the automobile and four lane roads will only facilitate this process by encouraging ever more vehicles to come to the state. I was aghast to read that 10000 vehicles crossed the Atal tunnel in Manali on just one day (26th December, 2022); the figure was 12,73,000 for the whole year. 13000 vehicles entered Shimla on Christmas day. Any one who has seen the pristine environment on both sides of the tunnel and the traffic jams in Shimla can only shudder at the inevitable consequences of these humungous numbers- emissions, garbage, plastics, excreta, law and order- all of which have already started to plague the residents of this state..

     There are at least a dozen sanctioned four-laning  projects and they need to be reviewed: they are just not necessary and lead to large scale land acquisition, displacement of thousands of families, cutting of hills and deforestation, continuous landslides and filling up of valleys, pollution of water sources. The Parwanoo- Shimla four-laning project, started some ten years ago, is just about half complete and prone to constant landslides. It still takes three hours to travel from Parwanoo to Shimla, so how is the widening helping? It will, when complete, only encourage more cars to come to the state; when they reach Shimla there is no parking space for them and during tourist season the town becomes one huge, chaotic, unauthorised parking lot. And remember, more than 17000 trees were cut to create this mess, pollution levels of all towns on this route- Dharampur, Solan, Kandaghat, Shoghi, Kaithlighat- have increased exponentially.

   Mr. Sukhu should take seriously the advice of Mr. Gadkari, the Union Transport Minister that Himachal should construct ropeways instead of roads. He should employ the state's limited resources on expansion of the rail network instead. He could begin by converting the 120 year old Kangra Valley Railway (Pathankot- Jogindernagar) 75 km narrow gauge line to meter or broad gauge. Ten million tourists visit this region every year, all by road because the KVR has been allowed to fall to pieces. Properly upgraded, it has the potential to replace tens of thousands of vehicles, make for a much more pleasant travelling experience, and significantly improve the environment. Extend the line to Mandi and link it to the proposed line from Kiratpur/ Bilaspur to Manali. There would then be no need for all those four lane roads that are playing havoc with livelihoods and the environment. 

[II ] SCRAP THE MANDI (BALH) INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT

  This ego-based foolishness must be given the quietus immediately. It serves no purpose, is redundant, is being vigorously opposed by the residents of the valley, and will drain the state's resources  (just the land acquisition will cost more than 2000 crores rupees). There is no justification for another airport when its three existing ones function below 50% capacity and cater to barely 1% of the arriving tourists. The social and environmental costs are enormous: 12000 farming families in 8 villages displaced, 350 hectares of the most fertile land in Himachal cemented over, deforestation and loss of bio-diversity, a tranquil valley converted to a hub of vehicular, dust and noise pollution. Upgrade the existing airports instead.

[III]  ABANDON THE SDP (SHIMLA DEVELOPMENT PLAN) 2041

           

                                                           [ Where are Shimla's trees ? ]

   This disastrous, short-sighted and unscientific plan (already stayed by the NGT) should be junked forthwith and the appeal against the NGT order withdrawn. By allowing construction in Shimla's protected Green Belt, Core Area and Heritage Zone, and five stories in the rest of the town, the SDP41 is making a mockery of science and town planning and endangering the citizens' lives. It will remove forever the remaining green cover and ancient deodars of this once beautiful colonial era town, and congest it beyond redemption. The Chief Minister should learn from the subsidence that is happening in Joshimath (Uttarakhand) even as I write this: the whole town is sinking under the weight of over construction and bad planning- more than 700 houses have already had to be abandoned. At least eight villages on its peripheries are also sinking.  The consequences for Shimla, sitting on a 6500 feet high ridge and built mainly on overburden strata, will be even more horrific in the event of landslides or earthquakes- a study estimates that 39% of all buildings will collapse and 40000 people will die. As someone who has lived here most of my life I consider that an underestimation. The need is to decongest and deconstruct the town, not allow and encourage more construction, traffic, garbage and pollution.

[IV] TAKE A PAUSE ON HYDEL PROJECTS

   The state has reached the tipping point as regards hydel power, from here on it's a case of diminishing returns and increasing environmental and social costs. Of its identified exploitable potential of 24000 MW, it has already commissioned about 13000 MW and another 5000 MW is in the pipeline. The remaining 6000 MW are all in difficult, geologically fragile, high altitude, para glacial areas and cannot be exploited without grave environmental damage, such as in Kinnaur, Lahaul Spiti, the Chandra-Bhaga basin, Parbati valley. They are all being opposed by local villagers. They also do not make economic sense any more with the plummeting cost of solar power: the reason why as many as a dozen hydel projects have been surrendered by their proponents in the last two years. The Chief Minister should dig out the 2010 report on Environmental Impacts of Hydel Projects prepared by the then Addl. Chief Secretary(Forests) which had even been accepted and commended by the High Court, but which successive governments had found to be too close to the bone and had consigned to the freezer.

                         

  [ What we don't need. A hillside in Sainj valley "redeveloped" in concrete for a power project. Photo by author.}

There are other environmental action points- water conservation, construction of check dams and Van Sarovars in the forest areas, rejuvenation of traditional kuhls, regulation of tourist numbers, disposal of mounting garbage piles, stopping of illegal mining on river beds, - and for all these the state can do worse than prepare a long term paper on Environmental Strategy 2050. The Chief Minister and his Advisors should take a hard look at what is happening in Uttarakhand. Not just Joshimath, it has now been reported that even Nainital, Champawat, Karnaprayag and Uttarkashi are sinking under the onslaught of rapacious commercialisation and unscientific "development". That state is a veritable laboratory for impending environmental apocalypse- dam bursts, GLOF ( Glacial Lake Overflow), landslides, subsidence, flash floods, earthquakes. Himachal has been lucky so far in that it has been generally spared these visitations of nature's backlash till now. But its luck will not last forever, and it is running out of time fast. A red flag has already been raised by an eminent geologist who has warned that subsidence has started in Mcleodganj, and that the main Dharamshala- Mcleodganj road and Khara Danda road too show evidence of sinking.

  I wish the Chief Minister all success in his challenging assignment. He belongs to a beautiful state and it now falls on him to bequeath it to future generations, unspoilt and unravaged. He will do well to remember that we have not inherited this world from our ancestors, but have borrowed it from our children. We hold it in trust. Betrayal of this trust, sir, would be filicide, and that cannot be your legacy.

 

TIME TO MOVE OVER TO A NEW KYC ( KNOW YOUR CROOK ) PROCESS ?

 

   Last week a voter enrolment camp was organised by the government in our RWA. While filling in the required Form 6 I realised that it was mandatory to provide a copy of one's Aadhar card. Now the law as it exists today and as reiterated by the Supreme Court states that the Aadhar is a mandatory requirement only if one is availing of the benefits of any govt. scheme or programme, such as PDS, MNREGA, PMGKY, Ayushman Bharat, subsidies, scholarships etc. It cannot be demanded for any other purpose, whether by govt. or private entities. Voter enrolment is not a subsidy or govt. ordained benefit, it is a right and should not require an Aadhar. But the official told me that if I did not comply then my application would be rejected. I had to perforce comply since I've just shifted residence and lack any address proof, without which I am as stateless as a Rohingya refugee in Cox's Bazaar. It would appear that (as my experience indicates) whenever someone enrolls himself as a voter his Voter ID automatically links itself to his Aadhar !

  This is by no means an isolated example of governments violating their own laws and the Court directions. Today, if you don't produce an Aadhar, you cannot avail of any govt. service. And it keeps getting worse: recently an RTI application has revealed that the Election Commission of India has collected the Aadhar numbers/ details of 540 million voters. Why? There is no law yet which states that it has to be linked to voter ID, so why is the ECI carrying out this mammoth exercise? What does it propose to do with the humungous store of personal data it has compiled? What steps has it taken to ensure that this information is safe from the regular "leaks" that keep happening all the time, or will not be "allowed" to be harvested by a private entity, as happened in Karnataka recently ? Your guess is as good as mine, for this discredited body has lost not only its spine but also its tongue in recent years.

  But an even greater cause for concern is the brazen manner in which private entities demand your Aadhar for all manner of services, without any authorisation of law; SIM providers, hotels, car dealers, insurance companies, banks. Banks have taken this harassment to an entirely new level- they have integrated the Aadhar into their KYC process and any failure to comply is a good excuse to freeze your account and make you beg for your own money ! A little more about this KYC nonsense is in order, I think.

  KYC stands for Know Your Customer but trust me, the Bank has no interest in knowing you, only in fingering your money and passing it on to our growing tribe of NPA billionaires. For the KYC is a regular ordeal for most of us, especially those who have changed addresses or those whose signatures don't match owing to the aging process or those who have forgotten their passwords, or those who are physically challenged. It was bad enough when we had to go through this reverification process every ten years, but now the RBI (which should be devoting its limited attention span to correcting the state of the economy) has decreed that the KYC shall be done every three years. One's life is becoming a litany of renewals and verifications if one is above 60- Net Banking passwords every six months, Life certificate every year, debit cards every three years, driving license every five years, car and health insurance every year, and now this ruddy KYC. We have now been "advised" to "update" our PAN cards every ten years even if there is no change in any of the particulars. ( As we all know by now, the word "advise" in recent times has acquired an entirely new meaning- "do it pronto, or else!"). The latest is that from the 1st of January this year, taking out any type of insurance will also require a mandatory KYC. I sometimes wonder: has anyone carried out a study to determine if all this KYCing has achieved any fruitful purpose?

   And don't miss the Godzilla sized irony in the whole thing- even while you and I struggle to prove that we are not crooks but pay our taxes and loans on time, the real crooks continue to loot the govt. and the banks (our money, actually) like it's an end of season sale- Rs. 12 lakh crores of unpaid loans have been written off by the banks since 2014 and an average of Rs. 2 lakh crores is being consigned to the shredder every year. The recovery rate is just 13%. Why is there no KYC (Know Your Crook) for these guys? Does it not make more sense, in every which way, to limit this verification exercise to only those accounts which arouse some suspicion in their operations or have defaulted in some way, than to continually harass the tens of millions who go about their business in a quiet and legitimate way day after day?

   There is another category- the bankers themselves- who need to be subjected to the new, crook-focused KYC, as the cases of Chanda Kochar ( ICICI) and Rana Kapoor (YES Bank) prove. More and more bank executives appear to share cosy relationships with their loanees. And what does one make of so many bank CEOs joining private sector companies immediately after retiring from the banks? This has become the standard practice, especially with CEOs of public sector banks (who, coincidentally, have the lion's share of NPAs !). Now, if this is a coincidence then I'm Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer. How about a cooling-off period of at least two years for these worthies, Madam Finance Minister, before they take their ambiguous talents to the fat cats?

   Government data reveals that ordinary folks- customers like you and me- are the best and most disciplined account holders. Default rates among credit /debit card holders, kisan and crop loanees, home and car loanees are by far the lowest among various categories. The major defaulters and swindlers are to be found among the business and corporate loanees, so doesn't it make more sense for the RBI and the banks to concentrate on them rather than on the salaried classes, pensioners, working self employed, farmers etc. Have they not heard of the 80:20 principle of management- devoting 80% of their effort on 20% of the customers who are actually the ones who need to be regulated ? What kind of an inverted regulatory fishing net have the banks invented, one which allows the big fish to escape while capturing the small fry? No industry can work on this lopsided and absurd principle, and therefore one is not surprised that the banks are sinking deeper into a hole with every passing year. 

   Don't say you haven't been warned, folks. Without a KYC you are a pauper, and without an Aadhar card you don't exist. If you have been fortunate enough to have reached the age of 70 years (the Walking Dead), always keep an Aadhar card in that empty wallet, and pin one to that coffin or saffron (what else?) shroud you may have ordered for your last journey, for sans that piece of plastic you're going nowhere- you can be neither buried nor cremated. At best, they'll make you a mummy and keep you under wraps, as it were, so that you can be identified later on. But do you really want to be another Tutankhamun and go from riches to rags, literally ?